The First 100 Days

Prime Minister elect John Key has promised major reforms in the first 100 days of his government. What are some of the new leader’s top priorities?

• Commission of Inquiry to determine how to make Prime Minister’s fancy ergonomic chair go up and down.

• Petition United Nations to recognise Murray McCully with honorary human status

• $290 million multi-media advertising campaign to sell budget cuts program to wary voters

• Keep straight face while explaining to Rodney Hide why he’ll make a great Minister of Womans Affairs

• Salvage economy by rummaging around in basement looking for stuff to sell on trademe.

• Sack stuck up little Parliamentary Services bitch that gave Gerry a hard time about credit card receipts.

• Said we wouldn’t sell Kiwibank, didn’t say we wouldn’t lease it in perpetuity. Suckers.

• Urinate in corners of every office on 9th floor.

National Oblivious Review

This is amusing; (via DPF) NBR editor Nevil Gibson congratulates himself on being the only journo in New Zealand to accurately predict the election result:

We have to say it because no one else will: Almost alone among mainstream media, the National Business Review’s call on the election result turned out to be the best one.

Our summary: “National will easily win a mandate while the Greens become a stronger force on the left. Maori will not hold a balance of power and Winston Peters will be history.”

With awesome predictability Gibson decides that the reason he was right and absolutely everyone else was wrong is because the rest of the media is so hopelessly liberal:

National truly reflects the heartland, yet the media are continuing down their path of denial by giving more coverage, in newspapers and on radio, to the Labour leadership issue rather than accept the broad mandate for a new broom government is much more newsworthy.

There are a few problems with his basic premise though – here’s New Zealand Herald political commentator John Armstong in his pre-election forecast ‘National on verge of historic victory‘ (oh these shortsighted liberal journalists!):

it now looks increasingly like a National-Act-United Future coalition will be able to secure a majority.

Key had looked like needing the Maori Party on board. Increasingly, it seems he won’t.

And here’s Christchurch Press political editor Colin Espiner on his pre-election Labour cheerleading ‘All signs point to a National victory on Saturday‘:

[To win] Labour would have to poll higher than any poll currently suggests. National would have to poll correspondingly lower. The Greens would have to hold their current unprecedented high polling level and translate it into actual votes in the ballot box – something they have not managed before. The Maori Party would need to win at least five of the Maori seats but poll badly on the party vote, so as to increase Parliament’s “overhang” and make it more difficult for National to find a majority.

And finally, Winston Peters and New Zealand First would need to make it back into Parliament.

All those things are possible. But they are not probable.

Here’s Peter Wilson, the political editor of NZPA (not online):

National and ACT [will] win comfortably. Whatever they get, they can add Peter Dunne to the total because he is expected to retain his Ohariu seat and has committed himself to National.

The question then becomes the extent of National’s lead.

If the National/ACT/Peter Dunne combination have a majority, it’s all over.

The Maori Party would be irrelevant, regardless of how many seats it wins.

You get the picture. The reality is that almost every pundit in the country predicted the outcome of the election, in this context it looks like the only person in a state of denial is Gibson; he should try reading what his fellow-journalists actually write instead of simply guessing and then writing outraged columns railing against his overwrought fantasies.

New Labour

Apres moi, le bonfire

Colin Espiner writes about the new Labour leadership:

And there’s the rub for Labour, and for Goff and King. They are hugely talented and successful MPs. Pound for pound they will match, and I reckon probably better, Key and Bill English in Parliament. No one stops Goff in full flight, and King is a handful at the best of times.

But there’s no way Labour can market them as fresh faces. Goff was first elected in 1981, for God’s sake, and while he lost his seat in 1990 he came back three years later and has been there ever since. King has been in Parliament almost as long.

They will give National a hurry-up, there’s no question. In fact I reckon Labour will be a better Opposition than National was.  But they don’t strike me as a team that can win in 2011. Early days I know. But this leadership ticket has a transitional look about it. Steady the ship, teach the new younger guns the ropes, rebuild the party, and look towards regaining the Treasury benches, in all honesty not before 2014.

Espiner is a much more astute observer of such things than I, but the notion that Goff and King are somehow too experienced to be real leaders doesn’t quite wash. Its true that in recent times the Nats have put a premium on inexperience and handed control of their party to rank amateurs twice in a row but that’s not the traditional model.

It’s also worth suggesting that gallery journalists are tired of Goff because they’ve been frog-marched around the Pacific with him for almost a decade; forced to adhere to his insane twenty hour schedules and then been slapped awake on the plane ride home and compelled to conduct a wrap-up interview. The people of New Zealand haven’t enjoyed such privileged access to the new Labour leader though – while the gallery are sick of the sight of him few people outside the Thorndon bubble have the slightest idea who he is.

It goes without saying that Goff will have to step down if he loses in 2011, and that his success in the election has absolutely nothing to do with him and everything to do with Key. If the Nats govern the country well there is simply nothing Labour can do to prevail against them.

If the Nats don’t deliver the goods though, or if, hypothetically, one of their coalition partners turned out to be less of a political party and more of a deranged and unstable cult then I think voters would cheerfully vote a Goff/King Labour party into power, no matter how jaded the gallery are about the notion.

In My Secret Life

. . . I’m a Leonard Cohen fan; if anyone has two extra tickets to the Wellington concert I’d be VERY interested in buying them.

Picture of the Day

August 2nd, 1914. A crowd in the Munich Odeonsplatz celebrates the declaration of war. Adolf Hitler, a 25 year old unemployed artist is circled in the foreground.

Maori Party Split over National Coalition Deal

Sources within the Maori Party indicate that co-leaders Tariana Turia and Dr Pita Sharples have fallen out over policy concessions proposed by National leader and elected Prime Minister John Key.

Senior National Party sources have confirmed that the infighting is due to Mr Key’s ‘Dangerous Game’ amendment to the Crimes act, which would allow Key to hunt up to 30 Maori per month through the tropical jungles of his Hawaiian holiday home and another twenty per month in the underground labyrinth beneath his handsome Parnell mansion.

The Maori Party have been offered entrenchment of the Maori seats and a review of the Foreshore and Seabed Act in exchange for fifty of their young every month for three years.

‘Maori are the most dangerous game,’ Key told reporters during an impromptu press conference on the parliamentary lawn. Print and broadcast media looked on while the newly elected banker turned politician practiced his renowned archery skills, and then ran for cover when the gleeful, laughing prime-minister elect turned his sights on them, severing arteries and amputating limbs with his deadly accuracy and explosive arrows .

It is understood that Sharples is deeply opposed to the proposed scheme while Tariana Turia is a strong advocate for Key’s right to hunt, kill and mount unemployed Maori youths, describing it as enhancing his rangatiratanga and sending a strong message to young Maori that if they study and work hard they will not be cut down in their prime by Key’s poison-tipped crossbow bolts or torn apart by his pack of savage dogs.

A resolution to the impasse was reached late last night, when the Maori party co-leaders met for a cup of tea to confront the problem. After a short, congenial discussion Dr Sharples drained his mug of Earl Grey and then slumped to the floor unconscious.

He awoke several hours later in the creaking brig of John Key’s nuclear submarine, en-route to his tropical island fortress where he will join twenty-nine other captors as they are stalked through the canopy. Sharples daughter, a spunky twelve year old computer hacker and his estranged ex-wife, a former special forces assassin turned professional stripper are also thought to be amoungst the hunted.

Oh this is gonna be GREAT

National have announced they will be ‘pruning’ the public service:

Incoming Prime Minister John Key says departmental chief executives will be asked to carry out spending reviews; he expects savings of at least $500 million over three years.

National won’t say what departments will be affected, but it wants to reduce the number of bureaucrats to about 36,000.

I don’t really have a problem with this policy as such – I don’t think we’re getting very good value for money  and much of the public service – IT and communications departments especially – should be reviewed.

But National DID just spend an entire election campaign promising us that they would NOT be cutting the public service. Their policy (repeated on almost a daily basis) was to cap it at its current size.

Breaking a major election promise before you’ve even formed your government doesn’t seem like a very inspiring way to start.

The Worst Journalist in New Zealand?

News is what a chap who doesn’t care much about anything wants to read. And it’s only news until he’s read it. After that it’s dead.

- Evelyn Waugh. Scoop

Graeme Reid at Public Address looks back over the election and comments on the media coverage:

During this campaign we got to witness some of the worst and witless from our media: how can any editor let a journalist ask — and then have printed! — a street-stop question to Helen Clark’s husband which is, “do you like sex?”

That is crass, insulting, stupid and just plain irrelevant. The editor who let that go should have to stand in the corner with that pathetic journalist. It told us nothing — other than how base “journalism” could be.

I remember that story well; the journalist went out of her way to tell us what designer clothes she was wearing and also queried the PM’s husband (a senior academic at Auckland University) on whether he showered with his wife. It was one of the all time low points of New Zealand journalism. You can read it here.

I thought about other election stories that struck me as unusually bad and a Herald on Sunday profile of Green co-leader Russel Norman came to mind; almost the entire story was devoted to the fact that Norman’s partner – Katya Paquin – had health problems and a famous sister.

By extraordinary coincidence it turns out that the same journalist – Carolyne Meng-Yee – wrote both articles. A quick google search shows that all of Meng-Yee’s work is of a similar standard and that as a writer she is obsessed with sex, fashion, celebrity and terminal diseases.

There is a place for these things and I’d like to think the front page of a serious newspaper is not one of them, but obviously I’m wrong.

I guess this excrement sells, and wouldn’t be surprised if (times being what they are) Meng-Yee eventually winds up as an editor of one of our major newspapers. It is also the reason many people hold journalism and the people who practise it in such abject contempt.

Tizard dismisses ‘rogue election result’.

Outgoing Auckland Central electorate MP Judith Tizard has assured staff and family that she will not be stepping down as an MP in spite of her loss to National Party candidate Nicky Kaye in last weekends General Election.

‘I certainly never heard anything about any election,’ Tizard told the Dim-Post this morning. ‘And if there was something like that going on I like to think I’d be one of the first to know.’

Upon being informed of the results Tizard was quick to dismiss their significance.

‘I don’t think this represents the true wishes of the people of New Zealand or the people of Auckland Central,’ Tizard said. ‘This is clearly a rogue election result with no real impact that the media is beating up in order to sell more papers.’

Tizard also confirmed that she would retain her role as an MP and Associate Minister for Arts and Culture no matter what the shape of the new government.

‘What on earth would I do for a living if I wasn’t an MP anymore?’ Tizard asked. ‘I’ve never heard anything so absurd.’

‘On top of everything else I have Sydney fashion week and the Cannes film festival coming up. How the hell would I pay for that if I wasn’t Associate Arts Minister?’

‘I really don’t think the voters have thought this through.’

Tizard has also confirmed that she will be maintaining her full contingent of staff and offices, rejecting the suggestion that she would now have to make her own dinner reservations and purchase her own plane tickets as ‘the worst kind of hate speech’.

Incoming National MP Nicky Kaye has advised she is negotiating a solution with Paliamentary Services, Tizard’s private secretary and an Armed Offenders unit.

The Silence is Deafening

Is it just me or has DPF been ominously quiet over the last 48 hours?

When he returns he’ll pretend to be happy with the change of government; those of us who know better understand that the real reason for his good mood will be the torrent of statistics and raw data generated by the election.

Other random asides:

Anecdotally I get the impression that many of the long-time Labour voters who supported National this time around are now experiencing buyers remorse; they voted for John Key and aren’t thrilled to find out they get John Boscowan and Roger Douglas as part of the package.

Speaking of Key, how cool is it that we have a PM with an emo daughter?

I spent election night watching the results pour in at a friends party in Aro Valley; the despair and anger at the result was palpable. This is significant because almost everyone in attendance was a civil servant and it will be their job to implement National-ACT policy for the next three years. I’ll be fascinated to see how that dynamic plays itself out.

Peter Dunne’s hair: too puffy or too awesome?

UPDATE: Russell Brown is back! Yay!